


Virtual Reality Bites

by yellowb



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 21:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16437254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowb/pseuds/yellowb
Summary: Does your life make too much sense?  Gentle reader, we're here to help.This is chapter 2 of a multi-author round robin.  Each author received only the last paragraph of the preceding chapter, and had a week to complete their own.  There was no other theme, outline, or organization. The whole work is not archived on AO3, but can be found here:  https://dark-solace.org/elysian/viewstory.php?sid=5772





	Virtual Reality Bites

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is by yellowb. 
> 
> Thank you for the beta, OffYourBird!

To make matters weirder, she wasn’t even in the desert anymore. She was in somebody’s house—in their front hallway—with a giddy-looking Spike and … was that the robot guy Warren? Before she had time to completely comprehend that, Warren had run out the door, and she was striding forward without any real control over her actions. Then—whoa to the infinite degree … Why was she kissing Spike? Oh, this was … surprisingly not unpleasant. Except everything felt odd about it, as if she wasn’t exactly feeling the sensation, but recording it? Something flickered in her mind’s eye, a wash of unintelligible computer code followed by a blaring command that declared, _Kiss Spike hello. Spike is evil and sexy_. What the what was going on? Was she … a robot?

Well, that was just nonsense.  She jerked away from Spike and demanded to know what was happening. Except she _didn’t_ jerk away. And her body seemed to be intent on demanding something quite different from Spike, in a non-verbal way, though it certainly involved … lots of tongue.  It was entirely disturbing, the way her body continued on without her.

After a moment of paralysis, however, she realized it wasn’t her body.  And maybe the robot idea wasn’t nonsense.  She’d had her mind attached to the wrong body before, as will happen on a hellmouth, and she could remember what that felt like.  Those adjustments — to Faith’s longer legs and higher center of gravity and muted sense of smell — they had been nothing like this dislocation. It was as though sensations were reaching her second-hand. 

She reached out with her mind, trying to locate some part of the body, something small and distinct.  The right thumb would do.  She felt for it, some hint of where it was, and got … nothing.  _Right thumb, right thumb, I’m feeling my right thumb_ , she thought furiously, and suddenly, across her up-close-and-personal view of Spike’s ear and a smidge of carpet, a schematic of a right hand appeared in etched white lines.

She could sort of figure out how to spin it, if she didn’t think too hard about how she was doing it.  Which was neat.  But she was reasonably certain the actual hand was not twirling in space as she did it, so it wasn’t very useful.  And what was she doing here, in some sort of virtual, Spike-loving —

That had been Warren at the door.Warren of the piteous girlfriend-robot. 

What the hell?  He’d fixed up the bot and sold it to Spike and somehow her desert meditation had plopped her down _inside April the sexbot?_   This was without a doubt the worst spirit quest ever, and she was going to give the first Slayer, and maybe even Giles, a good ass-kicking when she found her way back. 

But not Spike.  Spike was never, ever going to know she’d been inside April while—

Oh, good golly.  Time had _passed_ while she was rotating the virtual hand.  Things had _progressed._  If she’d ever even thought of doing … the thing April and Spike were doing … she wouldn’t have guessed it could be gone at in quite that way. 

At the thought, a new and educational schematic suddenly overlay her view. 

Buffy had an intuition that she was glimpsing just a single page out of a very large, very thorough library.  And though she immediately, and desperately, tried to never have thought that thought, here came the index, scrolling across her entire field of vision.  For a moment she was astonished at the options for sorting; but then she recovered. She needed to get herself out of April, like, _right now_. 

 

***

 

Concentrate, concentrate … with much work and backsliding and more work, Buffy had made it a ways up the information ladder in April’s electronic brain.  It took a lot of concentration to block out the flow from the sensory inputs, and the programming commands blasting like a bad PA system.  And to keep from accidentally opening files she had no interest in opening.  But there were layers beyond that … she had to get past her own tendency to put her thoughts into words; she had let it wash through her, had to go swimming in an ocean of code.  She’d never been computer girl, but somehow she found she could sort of follow things upward, or at least what her mind needed to think of as _upward_ in order to think about it at all.  Upward towards a bright blueness.  She wasn’t sure exactly what she was headed for, but she was certain she was on the right path.  And the path was brightening, becoming bluer and more solid and easier to follow.

And then it was very much as though her head hit a wall. Although she knew that the blue path continued — and also that there were many, many paths out ahead, more than she could ever quantify, spiraling away from her in fancy fractal geometries — the impression that she had run head first into something solid was so strong she initially thought something physical had happened to the bot itself. She plummeted back to the distracting sensory inputs like she’d fallen off a cliff. 

But as far as April was concerned, the world was borderline ecstasy, and wow … okay, she really didn’t want to be a voyeur, but these were exceptional circumstances.  And boy, April and Spike were _flexible_. 

She sighed mentally.  She had an irrational impulse to call Willow for advice; and just the casual thought was enough to cause a synopsis of Willow to wash through her. Pretty darn short, really. Best friend, gay, witch, computers …

Best friend. BEST FRIEND? 

She wasn’t inside of April at all. 

Warren had filled a special order.  And Spike was so going to die. 

 

***

 

Eventually, Buffy pushed her violent impulses aside — she couldn’t do anything about them right now anyway — and tried to concentrate on how to get out of the Special Order’s circuitry.  She wished she’d paid more attention to Xander’s sci-fi enthusiasms … hadn’t Star Trek been on for, like, 50 years?  Surely someone on there had needed to free herself from a robot and get back to her body at least once. 

Getting the schematics to move around … that was sort of like riding a bicycle. Not in that she could never forget it (she was looking forward to scrubbing the schematics from her memory, although she had doubts she’d ever forget #287), but in that she had to coordinate too many things at once for her to think too hard about any one of them and be successful. Following the blue path required something similar but on a larger scale; she had to let go of the individual folders and scrolling feeds and respond to the overall structure of things.  So maybe she had to take on an even bigger vantage point to get out. 

Yeah.  Easy. She tentatively tried to let her thoughts expand, feeling silly at just how nebulous her escape plan was. 

Warnings flashed.  Big red warnings, alarms even louder than the raucous instructions.  At first she thought it her own activity had triggered them, but as her attention tumbled back to the details of the physical world, she realized these warnings had to do with not keeping Spike happy. 

What an absolute horror-show Warren’s programming was. 

Special Order was standing in a dark, cavernous room with a bed.  Spike was leaning against the rough wall, his head lowered.  His form in the candlelight was strikingly lovely, a classical sculpture of despair.  He raised his head reluctantly and spoke.  “Did fine, pet.  Nothing wrong with you, not a thing.  Just wasn’t very bright of me, to think it would…”  There was a long pause.  “I just need to rest.”  The warnings faded.  Buffy was struck by his face; it wasn’t an expression she’d seen on it before.  He looked grief-stricken, miserable.

“Shall I help you rest?” asked the sexbot perkily. Buffy wondered if, off in the desert, her real body winced along with her mind.  Spike wanted to be alone, and Special Order couldn’t comprehend it. Also, Special Order’s voice was so tinny and thin.

“No,” said Spike, clearly making an effort to be kind. He moved to the bed, and slumped over on it.  “Just go, what, recharge for a bit.”  There was something distressing about seeing him like this when she wanted to feel nothing but fury and indignation.  Those things didn’t sit well alongside sympathy.

 

***

 

The blue path.  Here she was.  She knew what happened now; she was at what she thought of as the border of Special Order, and if she rammed right into it, she’d get nowhere.  Bigger, she needed to think bigger. 

She tried to feel her brain expanding past the edge. 

She tried to diffuse her thinking until it was as thin as a gas and could float out of Special Order’s circuitry. 

She tried thinking _let the spell be ended_ _!_

She tried thinking of nothing at all, and slipping invisibly across the border. 

All her weird little plans failed.  _Stupid Buffy_ , she thought resentfully, _making_ _stupid plans._ With the thought came a flare of Slayer-anger. 

The barrier across the blue path flickered, for just a moment.  Buffy did a mental slow blink. 

She’d never told anyone, but she secretly thought of her Slayerness as a little bit like the Incredible Hulk.  Like a separate entity that could come bursting through, lending her its hurricane strength and fury.  She did not particularly think of that entity as computer-code literate, but still — she did need some kind of power boost right now. She quieted her mind, tried to summon up her most elemental Slayer-self. 

And suddenly, she could feel it inside her, almost an independent creature, rough and furious and sharp as a demon’s claw. It was the first time she’d ever sought out the purest version of what flowed though her in battle; it had always come upon her incidentally.  With the invitation, she felt bigger, in some other sense than physical size.  She was powerful, and enormous.  She didn’t even have to pass through the border of the Special Order; she encompassed it, until the bot was just a little tiny piece of the universe that comprised her.  She strode across the virtual space-scape like a muscular giant, built from a constellation of stars.

Universe-Buffy would have laughed if _laugh_ could apply to her.  She was heady and free.  And she didn’t need to wonder where to go.  She could see a million paths unfolding, but the one that would lead her home to herself – the one that cried out _Slayer_ – tugged at her like a fiery golden rope.  Like calling out to like.  She surged along it.  Or maybe she became it.  She was rushing home home home _home_ _home homehomehomhomho_  

 

***

 

Buffy blinked corporeal eyes with relief, taking in the flat plane of the desert and the dark sky, backlit along the horizon by approaching dawn.  She breathed in the smoky scent of the fire, now just glowing embers. The grit on her lips had a faint tang of salt. 

She felt so strong.  Her Slayer-self was more vividly present than it had ever been. She couldn’t stop herself from doing a little exultant dance; it felt so right to have limbs again, and shoulders and knees, to move them, to whirl in a circle, to mark the passage of time with her physical steps as she felt her hair moving through the air.  She was filled with such power that the dry surface of the desert cracked into platelets, radiating away from her feet. A large snake slipped forward towards her, reared and dipped its head in obeisance.  A puma came to a cautious halt at the edge of the darkness, eyes shining. 

And then she saw _Buffy_ , sitting perfectly still at the edge of the fire.  She paused in her dancing, and looked down at herself, took in her long brown limbs and tattered clothing, her ropey and matted dark hair. 

Well.  Fuck.

 

***

 

“Put her down,” ordered Giles grimly, circling her for a cleaner shot with the crossbow.  The snake rattled a warning at him.

You had to hand it to Giles; threaten his Slayer and he reverted to the Ripper in, like, zero seconds.  It was maybe not the smartest move she’d ever made to carry her body with her when she went to find him.  But her body was so small and light, and it had seemed super convenient to have it on hand. Now Giles thought she’d done something terrible to herself.

“Giles, enough with the crossbow.”  Her voice was pleasantly deep and dark, if a little rusty, coming out of the First Slayer’s throat.  She could get used to this body, with its knife-edged, coiled power.  It was a serious body.  “I’m — well, we’re both fine, as far as I can tell. But we totally need your help, like, _yesterday_ already.”  The tip of the crossbow dipped as he gaped at her.

She frowned as she carefully laid her usual body down on the surface of the desert, smoothing the hair back from its unconscious face.  Had her nose always looked exactly like that?  The puma paced forward and sat protectively between her, her body, and Giles. “You’re not going to believe where I’ve been. And I really have to kick Spike’s ass.  Oh, and:  if I’m stuck in _this_ body?  Then I _desperately_ need a bottle of cream rinse.”


End file.
